1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to anchoring devices for marine vessels, and, in particular, to anchors adapted to hold a small boat in a stationary position in shallow water.
2. Background Information
Along much of the Gulf Coast portion of the United States, as well as elsewhere, it is popular to fish from a small boat in shallow water. Along much of the Gulf Coast, in particular, there are extensive shallow, grassy-bottomed regions, generally referred to as "flats", that are populated by various sports fish. Fishermen who fish the flats have heretofore employed several methods of holding a boat at a selected location. These approaches include the use of conventional anchors, as well as the use a pole shoved into the bottom and secured to the boat.
The use of anchors (e.g., of the popular Danforth or spud types) by flats fishermen has several shortcomings. One problem is that the boat's position is not firmly fixed and it can drift about at the end of the anchor line, which may conventionally be some fifteen meters long. Another problem is that in both setting and retrieving an anchor the anchor's flukes rip sea grass out of the bottom and thereby cause significant ecological damage. Yet a further problem is that when the anchor is hauled in, mud and sea grass from the anchor foul the inside of the boat.
Poles are sometimes used to manually propel a flats fishing boat (e.g., when trying to approach fish that would be spooked by the sound of an engine). In these cases, the fisherman may provide some sort of pole-retaining hardware (e.g., a vertically disposed pipe having two open ends and a diameter substantially greater than that of the pole may be fastened to the boat hull) to hold the boat to the pole after the pole is thrust more or less vertically into the bottom. Such arrangements fix the position of the boat much more securely, and cause substantially less damage to sea grass beds than does anchoring. This approach is not widely used, as poling is slow and laborious, and the great majority of flats fishermen do not carry or use poles.
Notable in the patent art in this area is U.S. Pat. No. 0,458,473 wherein MacDonald describes a jointed structure hinged to a submergible coastal artillery battery and comprising a pole inserted into the bottom of a shallow body of water. Other elongate pole-like anchoring mechanisms not hingedly secured to a vessel are taught by Mestas et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,960,064 and by Stokes in U.S. Pat. No. 4,702,047. Mechanisms other than anchors that are hingedly attached to a vessel hull are taught, inter alia, by Alexander, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,816,521 and by Sherrill in U.S. Pat. No. 3,046,928, both of whom show stem stabilizers, and by Doerffer, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,237,808, who shows a braking device.